Agefi Luxembourg - septembre 2026

Septembre 2026 7 AGEFI Luxembourg Économie & Banques ByBrunoCOLMANT, Ph.D.,Member of theRoyal Academy of Belgium F or two centuries, we have told the story of capitalismas one of money: banks, corporations,mar­ kets, interest rates, debt, andmonetary crises.We have come tobelieve that money is the rawmaterial of the eco­ nomy. Yetmoney is not realwealth. It does not feed anyone, heal anyone, or build a house. It is a claimongoods and services and a common language of value. Behind every good produced, every ser­ vice rendered, and every fortune accumulated lies a quantityof human time.Abaker sellsnot onlybread, but also the hours required to make it. A surgeon mobilizes years of study and practice. A company coordinates the time of thousands of people, while a machine contains the work of those who designed andbuilt it. Time is therefore the only formofwealth thatnoeconomycancreate.Noinventionaddsanoth­ er hour to the day, and no economic or political deci­ sion can lengthen a human life at will. Technology changes something else: the amount of human time requiredtoachievearesult.Amachinedoesnotcreate physical time. It saves human time. From this per­ spective, capitalism is not merely a system for pro­ ducing wealth. It has become an immense machine formanufacturing time. Preindustrialsocietiesdidnotliveexclusivelyinacir­ cular conception of time. Religions, genealogies, con­ tracts,debts,andpoliticalprojectsalreadygavehistory adirection. Yet productive life remainedoverwhelm­ ingly shaped by recurring natural rhythms. Sowing wasfollowedbyharvesting,andharvestingbyanoth­ er season of sowing. The farmer waited for rain and ripening crops, the sailor for wind and tides, and the merchant for roads to reopen after winter.Workwas organized by tasks, daylight, weather, and seasons more thanby the continuousmeasurement of identi­ cal hours. This seasonal time repeatedly returned to familiar points. The new year resembled the old one because production followed the same natural cycle. Nature determined when work could begin and when it had to stop. The clock existed, but it had not yet become the sovereignmeasure of production.An hourwasnottreatedthesameeverywhereasaninter­ changeable economic unit. Mechanization transformed that relationship. The factorybroughtworkers,machines, energy, andraw materialstogetherinoneplace.Peoplehadtobesyn­ chronized with the machine and with one another. The clock therefore entered production not merely as an instrument indicating the time, but as an authority dividing and disciplining it. Work began at a fixedhour, stoppedat another, andwas evaluat­ edaccording towhat couldbeproduced inbetween. Steampower loosenedproduction’s dependence on human and animal strength. Electricity extended activitybeyonddaylight. Railroads forced cities and regions tocoordinate schedules. The factorydivided the day into shifts and production into sequences. Mechanization did not invent linear time, but it imposed it as the dominant language of economic life. Seasonal cycles persisted, yet a continuous, impersonal, and cumulative timeline was superim­ posed upon them. Amechanized economydoes notmerely repeat pro­ duction; it expects production to increase. What was made yesterday becomes capital today so that more can be made tomorrow. The future is no longer expected to reproduce the past, but to exceed it. A company that stops improving its productivity loses ground. An economy that ceases to grow appears to be standing still. Under capitalism, not moving for­ wardbeginstofeellikemovingbackward.Thisorga­ nization of time also changed themeaning of capital. We describe capital as a factory, a machine, a patent, or a portfolio of securities. But capital can also be understoodaspasttimewhoseeffectshavesurvived. Workdisappears as it isperformed, andanhour can­ notbelivedtwice.Yetifitproducesatool,adiscovery, or software, something remains. Labor is perishable; capital can endure. It is a capacity to act upon the futurewith the preserved effects of the past. Money gives accumulated timemobility by convert­ ingdifferentformsofwealthintoacommonmeasure. Interest organizes an exchange between different moments:thesavergivesuppurchasingpowertoday, while the borrower brings future resources into the present. Finance expands this movement across the economy.Thestockmarketassignsapresentvalueto future profits, debt makes resources available today in exchange for later repayment, and inflation erodes the purchasing power of past savings. Finance is, at its core, a vastmarket for time. Wagesbelongtothesamearchitecture.Asalarycom­ pensates time surrendered to an organization. But inequalityalsoconcernscontrolovertime.Somepeo­ ple choose their schedules andpace of life; others live withinatimeconstrainedbywork,commuting,inse­ curity, or family obligations. Artificial intelligence gives this old question a new scale. Industrial machines reduced the time required for physical tasks. Engines mul­ tiplied strength, electricity extended the pro­ ductive day, and computers automated calcu­ lations.Artificialintelligencenowactsuponintel­ lectual tasks such as searching, translating, drafting,programming,summarizing,and analyzing. It can perform in seconds operations that once required hours of human attention. Artificial intelligence is not the first technologytosavetimefortheintel­ lect. Writing supported memory, printingreproducedknowledge,and computersshortenedcalculation.The current rupture lies in scale and gener­ ality. The same infrastructure can serve numer­ ous professions and compress time across many forms of cognitive work. Artificial intelligence sys­ tems combine accumulatedresearch, software, com­ puting infrastructure, data, and human knowledge. They concentrate past intellectual work andmake it available in the present. The factory machine multi­ plied physical effort at one location. Artificial intelli­ gence can multiply certain forms of intellectual out­ put worldwide almost instantaneously. Capital therefore begins to do more than increase the productivity of present labor. It can replace por­ tions of the human time previously required for a task. This extends capitalism’s historic ambition to producemorewithlesshumaneffort.Ifmorewealth canbeproducedwithfewerhoursofwork,however, the relationship among work, income, recognition, and social participation becomes less secure. The phrase “manufacturing time” must be under­ stoodprecisely.Artificialintelligencecreatesnophys­ ical time. It reduces the duration required to obtain a result. Thehours savedmayproducemoreoutput, lower prices, higher profits or wages, shorter work­ ing hours, or better services. Technology creates a surplus of time; individuals, companies, and soci­ eties decide how to use it. Capitalismusually reinvests the time it saves.When machines shortened production, businesses pro­ duced more goods. When transportation became faster, markets expanded. When communication became instantaneous,messages anddecisionsmul­ tiplied;artificialintelligencecouldintensifythispara­ dox. Areport that once required a daymay soon be expected in an hour, while faster access to informa­ tion may generate more information to review. Individuals couldbecomemoreproductivewithout becoming any freer. The central question is therefore who will benefit from the time saved by artificial intelligence. It may flow to the owners of technological capital through higherprofits,toconsumersthroughlowerprices,or to workers through higher compensation or shorter hours. That divisionwill reflect ownership, bargain­ ingpower, competition, andcollective choices.Work will not disappear, and human judgment, responsi­ bility, creativity, care, and physical skill will remain essential. But a person’s contribution can no longer bemeasured solely by the number of hours sold. Artificialintelligencemaythereforerepresentthecul­ mination of capitalism’s temporal logic. The system disciplined time through the factory clock, accumu­ latedpast time incapital, valued future time through finance, andpurchasedpresent time throughwages. It can now compress intellectual time. If the time saved becomes freedom, education, creativity, care, and rest, technological progress will recover its humanpurpose.Ifitbecomesonlyadditionaloutput, intensifiedwork, or concentratedprofit, themachine thatmanufactures timewill alsomanufacture exclu­ sion and exhaustion. The measure of prosperity may therefore have to change.Asociety isnot truly richermerelybecause it producesmore in less time. It is richerwhen the time savedbyitstoolsbecomestimethatpeoplecanmean­ ingfully use. Capitalism has spent two centuries learning how to economize time. Artificial intelli­ gence nowconfronts it with the question it has post­ poned:whatisthattimefor?Wealthmayalsoconsist in havingmore time to live. Capitalism: the machine that manufactures time BanquedeLuxembourg,sociétéanonyme–14,boulevardRoyal–L-2449Luxembourg–R.C.S.B5310 For over 40 years Banque de Luxembourg Asset Servicing has been helping initiators to set up their investment funds in Luxembourg. Our specialist teams are ready to assist you with tailor-made services, expertise and unwavering support. Supporting fund initiators since 1983